The professor, 75, has previously said he does not see a fundamental difference between a what a human brain and a computer can achieve, so it follows that at some point the machines can become better than us.

If it’s not machines crushing us in their drive for efficiency, it will probably be our own incompetence at managing planet earth, he said in the same interview with Wired magazine.

Much better than your puny, humanoid brain (Picture: Rex)

‘I believe we have reached the point of no return,’ he said.

‘Our earth is becoming too small for us, global population is increasing at an alarming rate and we are in danger of self-destructing.’

We urgently need more young people to get interested in researching space, he said, so we can colonise other planets and save our species.

It’s not the first time Stephen Hawking has sounded the doomsday bell about artificial intelligence.

Speaking on his 75th birthday, he said: ‘We are close to the tipping point where global warming becomes irreversible. Trump’s action could push the Earth over the brink, to become like Venus, with a temperature of 250C, and raining sulphuric acid.’

‘The forces that contributed to Brexit, the envy and isolationism not just in the UK but around the world that spring from not sharing, of cultures driven by a narrow definition of wealth and a failure to divide it more fairly, both within nations and across national borders, will strengthen,’ he said.

‘If that were to happen, I would not be optimistic about the long term outlook for our species.’